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The first impression you make with your online presence is not the design of your website, how elegant your logo looks or how much content you have on your website.

The first interaction anybody will have of your online brand is your domain name – the online address that you give your website.

Your Domain Name is The Most Important Asset for Your Online Branding

The name you give yourself or your business online is therefore critical to how successfully you help people to identify with your service, product or cause.

If you get it right, you gain an immediate advantage in differentiating yourself from your competition.

If you get it wrong, its an uphill battle to drive traffic to your site and continuously grow your tribe.

3 Tests for a Great Domain Name

A great domain name may take you a while to come up with, or it may come to you in an instant. I have three tests that I put to any domain name I come up with to determine whether I should run with it.

Unique

The best way to determine this is to check what happens when you go to any of the domain name registrars (e.g. GoDaddy) and enter the domain name you are looking for.

If its already registered, its not unique.

If there are other names similar to the name you are considering that are already registered, its not unique.

Memorable

My test for whether or not a domain is memorable is to try and imagine sharing your domain name with somebody verbally.

Would you have to spell it out for them?

Are there words in the domain name that sound like other words and could easily be confused.

Does the name have any hyphens in it (avoid at all cost)?

Is it easy to make a typo – and does that typo lead them to another page that has nothing to do with you?

All these questions are things you should consider when thinking about the “memorableness” of your domain name.

Meaningful

Finally, your domain name should have meaning – even if that meaning is not immediately obvious. Most of the time, the immediately obvious domain name for your service or product is unavailable, so being creative on this point could go a long way.

For example, one of my websites is a place for me to document my journey of learning about WordPress. I originally wanted to get a domain name like ‘WordPressMastery’, or ‘LearningWordpress’ but names like that are all taken at this point (and they were not as fun for me to use). So I remembered a term I had read about in the ‘computer geek’ world that was the concept of understanding something so thoroughly that it became a part of you – grok.

That word expressed how well I eventually want to understand WordPress, so I named the site www.igrokwordpress.com (which was available and didn’t overlap with any other names).

And just in case you are thinking that grok is an uncommon word and would violate my second test, consider that my target market for that blog is not just anybody – its “techno-nerdy” people like myself and so the likelihood of them knowing that word is quite high.

For the past two years I have learned a lot about web design in general and WordPress web design in particular. I demystified HTML and CSS for myself by taking the self-paced courses at Code Academy and then applied what I learned to customize some simple sites.

Through trial and error and a lot of ‘googling’ late into the night, I have taught myself a good amount of web design and WordPress skills.

I learned about the core capabilities of the WordPress CMS by getting a simple hosting account and experimenting. First by migrating my personal blog from WordPress.com to my own hosting and then offering to take on some family and friends as my first clients.

As I gained more confidence, and my commitment grew, I increased my level of investment beyond just owning a hosting account.

I signed up for the monthly subscription with Adobe and graduated from designing with Gimp to using the professional standards of Photoshop and Illustrator

I signed up with WPMU Dev and iThemes to access a rich community of knowledge about WordPress and web design. WPMU really opened my eyes about what can be achieved with plugins and iThemes BackupBuddy plugin is a lifesaver

I am now at a place where I have no doubt that I can be an exceptional web designer and a WordPress expert. I know how to get unstuck when I don’t know what I am doing and I have a borderline obsession with figuring out how to make my ideas come to life on the web.

My biggest obstacle is not talent or access to information.

My biggest gap is process.

It takes me too long to go from concept to implementation because I don’t have an orderly approach to my work. At the end of the project I have always produced work that my clients really like but it is sometimes too painful to get to that point.

The “figure-it-out as I go approach” is what has helped me learn as much as I have until now but I think its time to inject a higher level of professionalism and control to my work.

Inspired by Chris Coyier’s exceptional talk below, I realized that what I am missing is my own web design workflow that I can repeat and use to build consistency into my outcomes.

So over the next few months, as I work on my current projects, I will document my best practices on this blog. I know I still have a long way to go towards my goals as a designer, and I am excited because I know that this particular step is going to completely transform my ability to consistently repeat success.

Your online reputation is becoming increasingly more important than your business card and ignoring this trend will not make it go away.

But it may impact you in ways you don’t intend.

Business cards are clutter

Traditionally, business cards have served two main functions:

provide a snapshot of how to reach you

enhance the credibility of your role, function or business

I used to have a large collection of business cards because every time I met a new person, that was the best way to retain a quick snapshot of who they were and how to get in touch with them.

I also printed up business cards whenever I started up a new venture to give myself ‘credibility’ and make sure people could reach me. At one point, I carried around three business cards because I was working on three unrelated ventures at the same time.

Between carrying my own cards to give out and holding onto business cards from others, I often had a George Costanza wallet.

Today, this kind of wallet clutter is unnecessary. Instead, when I meet someone new, I ask them for an email address and/or cell phone number and enter them straight into my smartphone where the information automatically syncs up to all my communication devices. If somebody asks how to reach me, I give them my email address which is a more reliable way to reach me than my phone number.

With the ubiquity of digital ways to exchange contact information, the first function of the business card is becoming obsolete.

Your online presence is a competitive advantage

The second function of a business card, credibility, is easily trumped by your online presence.

Consider the following scenario:

You are trying to settle on a contractor to finish your basement. Your budget is $20,000 and the two remaining candidates both have great ideas – their quotes are a only few hundred dollars apart.

Because this is a significant investment, you meet with each of the contractors separately and tell them you need a few days to make your decision.

On departure, the first contractor hands you a business card and tells you to call him or email anytime if you have questions. He has an attractive, glossy business card with his cell phone number and an AOL email address. There is no url for a website but he gives you a few names of references to call.

The second contractor also hands you a business card and tells you to call or email. The business card is less attractive but still professional. It has his cell phone number, a website url and an email address that matches the website. He doesn’t volunteer any references but tells you to ‘check out his website’.

When you visit the second contractor’s website, you find a gallery page with ‘before and after’ pictures of several other basements he has completed. You also find a page of testimonials from satisfied customers.

But the place you spend the most time is the YouTube channel you get to from a link on his website; it contains short videos of him demonstrating several home improvement tips and tricks. One of the videos helps you fix a small problem in your house that has been bugging you for a few weeks.

You call him up and ask if its okay for you to speak to some of the past customers that left testimonials on the website. He gives you some names which you call and they all talk about what a great job he did and how much they learned from him and his videos.

Because you don’t have a url for the first contractor, you google his name and his company name to see what comes up. You find a few yellow pages entries that contain the same contact information on the business card.

You call the references he gave you and they all say he did a great job.

At this point, are you still conflicted about which contractor to choose?

Despite the similarity of their ideas and quotes, the second contractor would have significantly more credibility with me than the first even if the first one had the better business card and just as many references.

The first contractor’s approach to credibility is through the attractiveness of his business card and the list of references he provides. The business card is a signpost of his services.

But the second contractor uses his business card as a doorway to enchanting you even before you pay him a single dollar. His approach to credibility is through the engagement and generosity that is enabled by his online presence – he not only tells you about his services, he ‘gives away’ his expertise to you for free.

I believe the second approach will win in the majority of situations because it goes beyond a transaction and focuses on building a relationship. The second contractor is leveraging the power of a platform to differentiate himself and build a tribe of followers that will act as an extension of his marketing.

Market by connecting and engaging

I’ve used the example of a business card but this concept applies to any of the traditional pieces of collateral that we use for credibility and marketing.

It applies to brochures, postcards, billboards, posters, giveaways.

It applies to your resume.

All this collateral is not an end in itself – it should be used as a doorway to invite your prospects into a connection and relationship with you.

It is this connection that will yield the most fulfilling and impactful results in your career and business.